his sensibilities were not to a great degree blunted. In the attempt to explain these phenomena some have thought them an exception to the rule that pleasure accompanies only what is in some way useful, but it seems to me that a sufficient explanation of normal cases is found in the utility of the experimental impulse, which in seeking strong stimuli takes a certain amount of pain with the rest. So long as pleasure predominates over pain in the experience, play is possible. In pathological cases sexual excitement is often aroused sufficiently to neutralize the suffering, and where this is not the case we must suppose a perverse directing of the fighting instinct against one’s own body, furthered by the deadening of sensibility to pain. 2. _Mental Suffering_ Psychologists have given special attention to the enjoyment which is derived from contemplating unpleasant images and subjects. Perhaps the most familiar passage on the subject is that of Spencer’s on the luxury of grief, yet, as he himself admits, his idea of self-pity does not clear it up, and he goes on: “It seems possible that the sentiment which makes a sufferer wish to be alone with his grief, and makes him resist all distraction from it, may arise from dwelling on the contrast between his own worth as he conceives it, and the treatment he has received—either from his fellow-beings or from a power which he is prone to think of anthropomorphically. If he feels that he has deserved much while he has received little, and still more if instead of good there has come evil, the consciousness of this evil is qualified by the consciousness of worth, made pleasurably dominant by the contrast.... That this explanation is the true one, I feel by no means clear. I throw it out simply as a suggestion, confessing that this is a peculiar emotion which neither analysis nor synthesis enables me to understand.”[344] This is indeed an unsatisfactory explanation, and the play idea seems to bring us nearer to one, for here, as in the case of physical pain, it is the deep-rooted need of our nature for intense stimuli which enables us to enjoy our own suffering. That unassuageable longing of Faust which had exhausted the meagre emotional recourses of study, and now dragged him out in search of life and experience, was a longing for both pleasure and pain, since both could stir up life’s deep sea, which now lay stagnant: “Sturzen wer uns in das Rauschen der Zeit, Ins Rollen der Begebenheit! Da mag denn Schmerz und Genuss, Gelingen und Verdruss Mit einander wechseln, wie es kann Nur raselos bethätigt sich der Mann.”